ABSTRACT
The answer the questions: “what is utopia?” and “what is its philosophical and political meaning?” let us first review the genealogy of utopia. To begin with, a paradigmatic text to all utopian imagination is Thomas More’s Utopia published in 1516. The full title of this important book is Libellus aureus salutaris minus quam nec festivus de optimo Reipublicae stat de que nova insula Utopia that translates to “A truly golden little book, no less beneficial than entertaining, of a republic’s best state and of the new island Utopia”. The protagonist of this golden little book, a traveller Raphael Hythlodaeus is a clever storyteller, philosopher and a sailor, so to say an amalgam of Plato and Ulysses, who testifies to the existence of a country with the capital city in Amaurotum, which is a city-mirage in itself, a city-in-the dark, and a city in felix locus. At first glance, Utopia is short of a sheer lunacy with the potential to lead all history of utopia into the territory of “political madness”. Yet, this golden book lays foundation for a paradigmatic topic in literature; a fictionalized account of a travel. Along with this topic we get another one; the account of a fictitious society living “nowhere” in this world. This contexture establishes what I refer to as the utopian pact.
